For the remainder of this section the name of your recording device is assumed to be {{ic|/dev/cdrw}}. If that is not the case, modify the commands accordingly. In order to write to the CD it needs to be unmounted. If it is not, {{ic|wodim}} will give you an error message.

For the remainder of this section the name of your recording device is assumed to be {{ic|/dev/cdrw}}. If that is not the case, modify the commands accordingly. In order to write to the CD it needs to be unmounted. If it is not, {{ic|wodim}} will give you an error message.

−

If wodim gives you an error message similar too {{ic|Cannot open SCSI driver!}}, use the following command:

+

If wodim gives you an error message similar to {{ic|Cannot open SCSI driver!}}, use the following command:

Optical Disc Drive

In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disk drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from discs, but recent drives are commonly both readers and recorders, also called burners or writers. Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives. Optical drive is the generic name; drives are usually described as "CD" "DVD", or "Blu-ray", followed by "drive", "writer", etc.

CD-burning

Install CD-burning utilities

cdrkit is a suite of programs for recording CDs and DVDs, blanking CD-RW media, creating ISO-9660 filesystem images, extracting audio CD data, and more. The programs included in the cdrkit package were originally derived from several sources, most notably mkisofs by Eric Youngdale and others, cdda2wav by Heiko Eissfeldt, and cdrecord by Jörg Schilling. However, cdrkit is not affiliated with any of these authors; it is now an independent project.

If you intend to use cdrdao (for writing cue/bin files to CD), install that package instead.

Note:

If you face any issues with cdrkit, it is recommended to install cdrtools from the community repository (cdrkit is a fork of cdrtools). cdrtools is being actively developed and supports CD, DVD and Blu-ray burning along with complete CDRWIN cue/bin support. cdrtools does not depend on cdrdao. For more information, see this page from the cdrtools site

Make sure that you build a package using makepkg and install with pacman. Pacman wrappers may resolve to cdrkit instead

Modifying the CD-RW

For the remainder of this section the name of your recording device is assumed to be /dev/cdrw. If that is not the case, modify the commands accordingly. In order to write to the CD it needs to be unmounted. If it is not, wodim will give you an error message.

If wodim gives you an error message similar to Cannot open SCSI driver!, use the following command:

$ modprobe sr_mod

You can try to let wodim locate your burning device with this command:

$ wodim -checkdrive

Erasing CD-RW

CD-RW media usually need to be erased before you can write new data on it. To blank CD-RW medium use this command:

$ wodim -v dev=/dev/cdrw -blank=fast

As you might have guessed, this blanks your medium really fast, but you can also use some other options, just replace the word fast with one of the following:

all

blank the entire disk

disc

blank the entire disk

disk

blank the entire disk

fast

minimally blank the entire disk (PMA, TOC, pregap)

minimal

minimally blank the entire disk (PMA, TOC, pregap)

track

blank a track

unreserve

unreserve a track

trtail

blank a track tail

unclose

unclose last session

session

blank last session

Burning an ISO image

To burn an ISO image run:

$ cdrecord -v dev=/dev/sr0 isoimage.iso

Verify the burnt ISO image

You can verify the integrity of the burnt CD to make sure it contains no errors. Always eject the CD and reinsert it before verifying.

First calculate the md5sum of the original ISO image:

$ md5sum isoimage.iso

e5643e18e05f5646046bb2e4236986d8 isoimage.iso

If the CD was burnt in DAO (Disc At Once) mode by passing the -dao option to cdrecord you can calculate the md5sum of the burnt CD as follows:

$ md5sum /dev/sr0

e5643e18e05f5646046bb2e4236986d8 /dev/sr0

If the CD was burnt in TAO (Track At Once) mode it can be verified with dd and md5sum. You need to know the number of sectors to check. You can calculate this by dividing the size of the ISO file by 2048, but for your convenience this is included in the output of cdrecord:

Name the audio files in a manner that will cause them to be listed in the desired track order when listed alphabetically, such as 01.wav, 02.wav, 03.wav, etc.
Use the following command to simulate burning the wav files as an audio CD:

$ wodim -dummy -v -pad speed=1 dev=/dev/cdrw -dao -swab *.wav

In case you detect errors or empty tracks like:

Track 01: audio 0 MB (00:00.00) no preemp pad

try another decoder (e.g. mpg123) or try using cdrecord from the cdrtools package.
Note that cdrkit also contains a cdrecord command but it is just a softlink to wodim.
If anything worked you can remove the dummy flag to really burn the CD

Note: cdrtools provides all the functionality of dvd+rw-tools, as growisofs depends on mkisofs. Also the development of dvd+rw-tools seems to be stalled for the past 5 years (the last release was in 2008)

Tip: If you wish to use a graphical front-end, install k3b or brasero, and you need to read no further.

Procedure

This HOWTO will use the command growisofs from the dvd+rw-tools package. If you have ever written CDs from the command line before, you will know the process of first creating an iso9660 file (mkisofs), and then burning it to CD (cdrecord). growisofs merges these steps, so you do not need extra storage space for the ISO file anymore. Another advantage is that multisession writing has been simplified.

as seen above, this starts a new DVD; to continue a multisession DVD, use -M

-v

increase verbosity level (more output)

-l

breaks DOS compatibility but allows for longer filenames

-dry-run

simulate writing (remove this flag if you are sure that everything is set up correctly)

-iso-level 3

defines how strict you want to adhere to the iso9660 standard (-iso-level 1 is very strict while -iso-level 4 is very loose)

-R

see above

-J

see above

-speed=2

start burning at 2X speed

-joliet-long

allows longer Joliet file names

The final part needs more explanation:

-graft-points /files/=/path/to/files/

This specifies that files will be stored in the subdirectory /files rather than the DVD root. See the mkisofs manual for details.

Note: growisofs is basically just a front-end to mkisofs. That means that any option for mkisofs also works with growisofs. See the mkisofs man page for details.

Re-writable DVDs

The process for burning re-writable discs is almost the same as for normal DVDs. However, keep in mind that virgin DVD+RW media needs to be initially formatted ("blanked") prior to usage. Blanking can be done using the program dvd+rw-format like this:

$ dvd+rw-format /dev/cdrw

where /dev/cdrw is your DVD writer device.

DVD Playing

DVD, also known as Digital Versatile Disc or Digital Video Disc, is an optical disc storage media format used for video and data storage.

Requirements

If you wish to play encrypted DVDs, you must install the libdvd* packages:

DVD players

MPlayer

MPlayer is efficient and supports a wide variety of media formats (i.e. almost everything). To play a DVD with MPlayer:

$ mplayer dvd://N

...where N is the desired chapter number. Start at 1 and work up if unsure.

Mplayer checks /dev/dvd by default. Tell it to use /dev/sr0 with the dvd-device option at the command line, or the dvd-device variable in ~/.mplayer/config.

To play a DVD image file:

$ mplayer -dvd-device movie.iso dvd://N

To enable the DVD menu use (NOTE: you use arrow keys to navigate and the Template:Keypress key to choose):

$ mplayer dvdnav://

To enable mouse support in DVD menus use:

$ mplayer -mouse-movements dvdnav://

To find the audio language, start MPlayer with the -v switch to output audio IDs. An audio track is selected with -aid <audio_id>. Set a default audio language by editing ~/.mplayer/config and adding the line alang=en for English.

With MPlayer, the DVD could be set to a low volume. To increase the maximum volume to 400%, use softvol=yes and softvol-max=400. The startup volume defaults to 100% of software volume and the global mixer levels will remain untouched. Using the 9 and 0 keys, volume can be adjusted between 0 and 400 percent.

Some utilities perform both tasks, whilst others focus on one aspect or the other.

dvdbackup

dvdbackup is used simply for data extraction, and does not transcode. This tool is useful for creating exact copies of encrypted DVDs in conjunction with libdvdcss or for decrypting video for other utilities unable to read encrypted DVDs.

dvd::rip

dvd::rip is a front-end to transcode, used to extract and transcode on-the-fly.

The following packages should be installed:

dvdrip: GTK front-end for transcode, which performs the ripping and encoding

Ripping a DVD is often a simple matter of selecting the preferred codec(s), selecting the desired titles, then clicking the "Rip" button.

FFmpeg

FFmpeg is capable to do a direct rip in any format (audio/video) from a DVD-Video .iso image, just select the input as the *.iso image and proceed with the desired options. It also allows to downmixing, shrinking, spliting, selecting streams among other features.

HandBrake

HandBrake is a multithreaded video transcoder, which offers both a graphical and command-line interface with many preset configurations. The package is available in the official repositories: handbrake.

MEncoder

MEncoder is a free command line video decoding, encoding and filtering tool released under the GNU General Public License. It is a close sibling to MPlayer and can convert all the formats that MPlayer understands into a variety of compressed and uncompressed formats using different codecs. Wrapper programs like h264encAUR and undvdAUR can provide an assistive interface.

Hybrid

Hybrid is a multi platform (Linux/Mac OS X/Windows) Qt based frontend for a bunch of other tools which can convert nearly every input to x264/Xvid/VP8 + ac3/ogg/mp3/aac/flac inside an mp4/m2ts/mkv/webm/mov/avi container, a Blu-ray or an AVCHD structure.

DVD-VR

The DVD-VR standard defines a logical format for video recording on DVD-R, DVD-RW, and DVD-RAM style media, including the dual layer versions of these media. As opposed to media recorded with the DVD+VR recording standard, the resulting media are not DVD-Video compliant, and will not play back in some DVD-Video players. Most DVD video recorders in the market that support DVD-R, DVD-RW, or DVD-RAM media will allow recording to these media in DVD-VR mode, as well as in a DVD-Video compliant mode. It is possible to use the DVD-VR format with DVD+R and DVD+RW media, but no examples are known other than some PC based recording utilities.

.VRO files extracted from a DVD-VR can be easily converted and splitted in regular .VOB files using the DVD-VR program.

Nero Linux

Nero Linux is a commercial burning suite from makers of Nero for Windows - Nero AG. The biggest advantage of Nero linux is its interface which similar to window version. Hence, users migrating from windows might find it easy to operate. The Linux version now includes Nero Express, a wizard which takes users through the process of burning CDs and DVDs step-by-step, which users will be familiar with from the Windows version. Also new in version 4 is Blu-ray Disc defect management, integration of Isolinux for creating bootable media and support for Musepack and AIFF audio formats...

Nero Linux 4 retails at £17.99 with a free trial version also available.

Note: For Nero Linux you need to load sg module at boot time. Put a namesake file in /etc/modules-load.d:

/etc/modules-load.d/sg.config

sg

Some updates ago the sg module wasn't auto loaded any more and Nero needs it.

Troubleshooting

K3b locale error

When running K3B, if the following message appears:

System locale charset is ANSI_X3.4-1968
Your system's locale charset (i.e. the charset used to encode file names) is
set to ANSI_X3.4-1968. It is highly unlikely that this has been done intentionally.
Most likely the locale is not set at all. An invalid setting will result in
problems when creating data projects.Solution: To properly set the locale
charset make sure the LC_* environment variables are set. Normally the distribution
setup tools take care of this.

Brasero fails to find blank discs

Brasero fails to normalize audio CD

If you try to burn it may stop at the first step called Normalization.

As a workaround you can disable the normalization plugin using the Edit > Plugins menu

VLC: Error "... could not open the disc /dev/dvd"

If you get the error, "vlc dvdread could not open the disc "/dev/dvd"" it may be because there is no device node /dev/dvd on your system. Udev no longer creates /dev/dvd and instead uses /dev/sr0. To fix this edit the VLC configuration file (~/.config/vlc/vlcrc):

# DVD device (string)
dvd=/dev/sr0

DVD drive is noisy

If playing DVD videos causes the system to be very loud, it may be because the disk is spinning faster than it needs to. To temporarily change the speed of the drive, as root, run:

# eject -x 12 /dev/dvd

sometimes:

# hdparm -E12 /dev/dvd

Any speed that is supported by the drive can be used, or 0 for the maximum speed.

Playback does not work with new computer (new DVD-Drive)

If playback does not work and you have a new computer (new DVD-Drive) the reason might be that the region code is not set. You can read and set the region code with regionsetAUR from the Arch User Repository.

None of the above programs are able to rip/encode a DVD to my hard disk!

Make sure the region of your DVD-reader is set correctly, otherwise you'll get loads of unexplainable CSS-related errors. Use regionsetAUR to do so.